CLINIC’S NEW CEO SEES OPPORTUNITIES TO EXPAND CARE

Fernando Sañudo took over this month after about 25 years working for organization

Fernando Sañudo, the Vista Community Clinic’s new chief executive officer, said he wants to use his experience and knowledge of the community to expand the agency’s services.

Sañudo, who took over the clinic’s leadership Jan. 1, has been working for the organization for about 25 years and has collaborated closely with the clinic’s former longtime CEO Barbara Mannino to create a smooth transition when she retired last month.

“The great thing is that I’ve been here so long that I’ve seen a lot of things and I have a really good relationship with all of our executives,” Sañudo said. “So if there is something I don’t know, I know who to go to.”

Raye Clendening, president of the clinic’s board of directors, said Sañudo was the right person to lead the clinic given his talents and his long commitment to the organization. Mannino is remaining as a consultant to the clinic for one year.

“We are pleased to have him on board,” Clendening said about Sañudo. “I think there is confidence in his ability to continue the legacy of Barbara Mannino and not just to sustain the legacy, but enhance it.”

Sañudo, 50, said he sees great challenges and opportunities for the clinic coming as a result of the new federal health care law, which requires everyone to have health insurance and creates programs to help insure those who don’t have it.

The clinic’s recent expansions make it well prepared for a potential influx of new patients as a result of the new law, Sañudo said.

“We have space now to grow, and it’s one of the biggest negatives that we had,” he said.

The clinic recently completed a $20 million expansion that doubled its Vista facility and allows its staff to serve about 12,000 more patients each year. The project was paid in part through an $11.4 million federal grant. The rest was paid through donations and the clinic’s own reserves.

Along with an additional 31,000 square feet for exam rooms, classrooms and office, the expansion also includes an above-ground parking garage that has space for 300 vehicles.

Sañudo said lack of parking space was routinely one of the top complaints that clients had about the clinic.

Since it opened in 1972, the Vista Community Clinic has grown from a small facility housed in a former dog pound on Mercantile Street to one that operates five clinics serving 57,000 patients in Vista and Oceanside each year.

The clinic provides care on a sliding scale for families with low incomes. The less a family makes, the less it pays. It relies on a wide range of funding sources to provide free or drastically discounted medications and services.

Sañudo’s early life mirrors that of many of his patients. He grew up poor in the border town of Calexico, east of San Diego.

Working at a community clinic in Brawley, he developed a love for the health care field. An outstanding student, Sañudo left home for the first time in the early 1980s to attend UC San Diego, where he majored in biology. He also holds a Master of Public Health degree from San Diego State University.

Sañudo was hired by the clinic in 1987 as a health educator making people in the Latino and farm-working community aware of HIV/AIDS. After five years, he became the director of the clinic’s health promotions department.

Mannino said Sañudo is an “exceptional individual.”

“He is incredibly innovative and very structured,” Mannino said.

Mannino said she has been working with him for several years in preparation for her retirement. She said Sañudo has never turned down a challenge and that when she asked him if he was interested in the position, he “was so excited that he started shaking.”

She will remain as a consultant for one year to continue mentoring Sañudo, Mannino said, but she added that she has great confidence in his success.

“I’m looking forward to watching him blossom,” Mannino said.

Last summer, Sañudo got a chance to see what the job would be like, he said.

“This summer she was out for about four months, and so I was able to basically try out the position, and she wanted me to get a sense of what it would be like,” Sañudo said.

His work has drawn praise from many in the community, including Jose Aponte, director of county libraries and former Oceanside assistant city manager.

“Sañudo is comfortable with the demands of leadership; in short, he is a proven manager, sterling innovator and purposeful servant of the Vista clinic’s long mission to provide quality health care for those most in need,” Aponte said.

As a longtime member of the clinic’s administration, Sañudo said he has become well acquainted with the community it serves.

“It’s made it a smooth transition,” Sañudo said. “People within the community know me already, so it isn’t someone new coming into the organization trying to establish relationships.”